This section of the report contains information specific to the Wausau area economy. Tables 7-14 provide information on labor market conditions, retail sales, government assistance to individuals, construction activity and financial institutions.

     Table 7 indicates that the Marathon County expansion has spread to all sectors. In contrast to the earlier phases of the upswing, manufacturing employment gains are moderate. The trade sector has now become the driving force behind economic growth in the county, adding 900 jobs over the past year. The opening of the Wausau Mall was the catalyst for payroll increases in this sector.

     A phone survey of 30 major retailers in the Wausau area forms the basis for Table 8. The questionnaire was administered for the first time in the second quarter of 1984. There­fore, there is no previous index value to use for comparison. The survey is comprised of four questions. Retail store managers are asked to compare total sales and store traffic to six months earlier. Next the managers are asked about their expectations regarding sales and traffic volume for the coming six months. Just as in the case of the Business Confidence index described earlier, the Conference Board scoring system is used to tabulate the responses.

     Although the usefulness of the index will be enhanced when more surveys are con­ducted, the June 1984 results provide some important insights. Retailers view the second quarter level of sales and traffic as slightly better than six months earlier. There is also optimism about the coming months, with the index rising modestly in terms of both ex­pected sales and expected store traffic.

      The volume of help wanted advertising provides a good measure of labor demand in the local economy (Table 9). The index is calculated by summing the number of employ­ment positions advertised in the Wausau Daily Herald. The second quarter figure was totaled over the first ten working days of June. A comparable process is used to obtain the base year (June 1980). The volume of help wanted advertising this past June was 118.1% of the 1980 level. More importantly the index value is well above the recession influenced level of June 1983.

     The number of individuals receiving government assistance is a measure of economic stress in the community. Tables 10 and 11 reveal the eligibility for public assistance and unemployment claims at the respective Wausau offices. Both measures indicate the existence of a solid economic expansion. However, the number of new applications for public assist­ance is substantially higher than during the second quarter of 1983. This suggests that the expansion has yet to benefit certain groups in the Wausau area.

     Measures of construction activity are presented in Tables 12 and 13. The notoriously volatile residential construction industry has demonstrated remarkable resilience to high real interest rates. Residential building permits and the value of new homes are up solidly from year earlier levels, although alteration activity has declined.

     Expenditures on nonresidential construction are well below the booming 1983 second quarter level. Downtown renovation spurred this jump in activity and a drop off was in­evitable. Given the population base of the Wausau area, nonresidential construction will always demonstrate wide swings, even on a seasonally adjusted basis. The important result of a spurt in nonresidential construction is the creation of employment opportunities in the future. Recalling Table 7, it is clear that last year's boom generated a large number of retail trade jobs.